Access Raspberry Pi directly from Windows PC

Access Raspberry Pi directly from Windows PC

Usually beginners require a display, keyboard and mouse for using Raspberry Pi. But being a linux based system, the Pi can be accessed through a variety of methods like SSH (check our Raspberry Pi SSH tutorial), VNC (check our Raspberry Pi VNC tutorial) etc.. But these methods require an already existing network consisting of a router or other network devices.

It would be easier to directly connect the Pi to the computer and work with it without any additional hardwares like router. But unfortunately it is not possible by default as both devices don’t have ip address and network parameters configured, they cannot communicate with each other. Either these need to be set manually or automatically assigned. Setting manually may lead to ip address conflicts and configuration errors therefore automatic assignment is preferred. For this we install a DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) server on the computer.

DHCP enables the clients to dynamically request ip addresses and parameters from the server. These are assigned automatically without manual intervention of a network administrator. Windows bundles a DHCP server which can be used for internet sharing but unfortunately its difficult to find the ip address it assigns. Therefore we are going to use a third party DHCP server.